They've never really overhauled their sound, but Asobi Seksu have still managed, with the release of Hush, to subvert my expectations three consecutive times. In 2003, a name that loosely translates to "casual sex" and a J-Pop-inspired album cover certainly didn't add up in my mind to "passable c. 1996 Lush pastiche." Three years hence, after I'd forgotten about them, they go and drop Citrus, either a feat of reinvention or maturation, depending on who you ask, but a minor miracle either way. I still find myself listening to the gauzy, slo-mo bubble-gum of "Thursday" once or twice a week: a John Hughes film-ending, "Kim & Jessie"-style jam, it retains the power to make a simple walk down the street intensely melodramatic (and is by itself better than anything Lush ever did). Now, another three years have passed, Citrus made me look forward to Hush, and here I am again, a bit perplexed. And not just because I can't figure out what those mysterious woodland creatures are surrounding Yuki Chikudate on the cover.
The last two album titles are instructive: Citrus was lively and sharp, while Hush too often refuses to rise above its inside voice. Now whittled down to the duo of Chikudate and James Hanna, Asobi Seksu have moved to the middle of Citrus' broad tonal palette rather than expanding upon its quietly experimental tendencies. "Me and Mary", for some reason buried at the end of the album like it's playing under the closing credits, is the most chipper tune they've ever recorded. It's also the most satisfying track on Hush because it doesn't simply suggest something without delivering; it's all bridge-chorus indulgence, something that the band is good at, and which the music itself suggests might be part of its DNA. Earlier, "In the Sky" and "Meh No Mae"-- essentially low-key rewrites of "Thursday"s gossamer, multiple-crescendo approach-- acquire much of their distinctiveness from being surrounded by opalescent mood pieces. And that's the thing: Hush uses the same tools as Citrus-- treated guitar arpeggios, wobbly organ drones, rumbling drums and Chikudate's piercing high soprano-- but recombines them in ways that don't add up to much that sticks.
Like Blonde Redhead and School of Seven Bells (and the Cocteau Twins before them), Asobi Seksu are studio-rat dream-pop conjurers, crafting sophisticated sky-castles designed to whisk us alight. Over the past two years, however, the first two groups have made glimmering, propulsive variations on essentially the same aesthetic template as Hush, yet one based around what felt like an M.O. of songs first, style second. The paint-by-numbers preciousness of "Gliss" and queasy Brit-Pop of "I Can't See", while pleasant enough on their own terms, don't bring it enough for Chikudate and Hanna to keep up with their most recognizable contemporaries. None of this is to say that Hush is a bad album-- far from it. It is a work that shows a band still struggling to come to terms with itself, discovering on record the music it wants to make, and settling for a safe middle ground in the end. On "Familiar Light", an early track that again teases toward something grand but stops mid-bloom, Chikudate seems to hint at her current creative methodology: "I stared at the ceiling/ To regain some feeling." Question: Was the ceiling stark white, perhaps with a stucco texture, maybe with occasional jagged cracks breaking up the uniformity? Hmm. Perhaps for album four, looking out the window again might be a better idea.
